Tag:

Fugitive Slave Act

Frederick Douglass’ Fifth of July Speech Asks ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? is the popular name of a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on the Fifth of July 1852 in Rochester, N.Y.

The most famous speech of the orator’s career, it marked a departure from his mentor, Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. In it, Douglass expressed his desire to participate in the political life of the nation, while the more radical Garrison rejected it outright.

Frederick Douglass in 1848.

Garrison thought the U.S. Constitution supported slavery, that the country was built on slavery and that free states should secede from the Union.

Douglass’ Fifth of July speech argued people could interpret the Constitution as opposed to slavery. And it expressed his hope and desire to share in the freedom and justice sought by the Founding Fathers.

In other words, Garrison wanted out of the government created by the Constitution, while Douglass wanted in.

The Fifth of July speech, at 10,000 words, probably took Douglass over an hour to deliver. His sponsors, the ladies of the “Rochester Anti Slavery Sewing Society,” had 100 copies printed of his ‘most able and eloquent oration’ in pamphlet form.

Fifth of July Speech

Douglass starts the Fifth of July speech by telling the white audience that the Fourth of July is the birthday of their independence and freedom. And he tells them their celebration, their ‘jubilee shouts,’ make the chains of the enslaved ‘more heavy and intolerable.’

He acknowledged the achievements of the country’s founders, and his audience’s right to celebrate them:

They succeeded; and today you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary.

But then he asks the rhetorical questions, What am I doing here? Should I celebrate this day?

…why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?

No, he answers just as rhetorically:

The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

“What to the slave…”

The 46^th paragraph of the speech was perhaps Douglass’ most famous passage.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which lie is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity…

Engraving from the Anti-Slavery Almanac

He grows more and more furious, more and more vituperative:

…your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence.

Shout of liberty and equality, he stormed, are “hollow mockery.”

…your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

The Constitution

He then excoriates religions for their silence on the subject of slavery. But, unlike, Garrison, he defends the U.S. Constitution as a document that rejects slavery.

“Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro . slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

Douglass ends the Fifth of July speech on a note of hope. He predicts the Civil War – and the end of slavery.

The Road to the Fifth of July Speech

Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglass rode the Underground Railroad to freedom in 1838 at the age of 20. He settled in New Bedford, Mass., a good choice of residence. The whaling city’s maritime industries were open to African-Americans, and many who escaped from slavery put down roots there. New Bedford by 1853 would have the highest population of African-Americans in the Northeast.

Douglass had taught himself to read while enslaved, and eventually he began to speak out against slavery at abolitionist meetings in New England. He gave his first speech on Nantucket, describing the cruelties of slavery.

William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison, leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society, heard him speak. He decided to put him on the broader abolitionist circuit. Garrison, 13 years older than Douglass, mentored him as he rose to stardom as an abolitionist lecturer.

Douglass moved to Lynn, Mass., in 1841, and then to Rochester, N.Y., in 1852.

Burning the Constitution

Two years later, Garrison publicly burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution. On a hot July 4, 1854, at the Harmony Grove picnic area in Framingham, Mass., he began with a speech. Much as Douglas had, he questioned Fourth of July celebrations.

“To-day, we are called to celebrate the seventy-eighth anniversary of American Independence. In what spirit?” he asked. “With what purpose? to what end?”

He then burned a copy of the hated Fugitive Slave Act as the abolitionist crowd cried “Amen.”

Anti-slavery poster. Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Then he burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution. He called it “the source and parent of all the other atrocities–‘a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell’.'” As it burned, he cried out: “So perish all compromises with tyranny!”

Douglass and Garrison broke over their different views of the Constitution. Douglass later explained:

When I escaped from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, I adopted very many of their opinions, and defended them just as long as I deemed them true. I was young, had read but little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent experience and reading have led me to examine for myself. This has brought me to other conclusions.

Eventually the two men reconciled after the abolition of slavery.

Such actors as Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones and Danny Glover have delivered the Fifth of July speech. Watch James Earl Jones read excerpts here. Or watch Douglass’ descendants read excerpts here.

Read the whole speech here.

This story was updated in 2022.

1 comment 878 views

When Daniel Webster Freed the Slaves

Daniel Webster was one of those politicians who embraced the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which allowed for the return of escaped slaves from free states back to the South. But in his personal life, Daniel Webster freed the slaves.

Webster, born in Salisbury, N.H., represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate. He became a symbol of the fence-sitting about slavery that infuriated abolitionists. Webster‘s compromise efforts to preserve the Union, the most prescient of them said, were futile as well as immoral.

Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster Freed the Slaves

In his personal life, Webster was more decisive on the issue of slavery. He employed a young woman in his Washington residence, Monica McCarty, as his cook. McCarty was a slave who was owned by Judge William Cranch, of Weymouth, Mass. Cranch, a cousin of Abigail Adams, served as chief judge of the federal court in Washington, D.C.

Webster told Cranch that McCarty was an excellent cook. Her duck, soft-shelled crabs, and other seafood dishes were celebrated throughout Washington society.

William Cranch

When Cranch offered to sell McCarty to Webster, he recoiled at the idea of ever owning another person. He did, however, agree to purchase her freedom for a total of $600.

Webster and McCarty agreed she would repay Webster the cost from her earnings. However, the soft-hearted Webster most likely never collected. When he died, McCarty had $2,000 in an account established for her, but Webster never asked her to repay him.

McCarty was just one of several slaves that Webster personally liberated. He paid to free Henry Pleasants, who Webster employed as a servant. Pleasants and Webster’s son Edward went on to become fast friends for life. And in another case, Webster helped Ann Bean, his housekeeper, free her husband. Bean was free, but her husband was not.

Paul Jennings

When Bean was close to having set aside the $1,500 needed, Webster agreed to supplement whatever she had saved in order to win his freedom.

Paul Jennings

And in another case, he discreetly loaned Paul Jennings $120 so he could buy his freedom from former first lady Dolley Madison. Webster had known Jennings from his days when he was the personal servant of President Madison in the White House.

Jennings would go on to assist in the escape of 77 slaves to the north aboard the ship Pearl, according to the book, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons. And he would write his own memoir, A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison.

Webster famously struggled with money throughout his life. Little wonder with him throwing it around the way he did.

This story was updated in 2022.

0 comment 833 views

The Boston Slave Riot of 1854

The Boston slave riot of 1854 was a contest for the soul of Boston in which slavery supporters won the battle but lost the war.

Anthony Burns, whose arrest caused the Boston slave riot.

An angry mob of abolitionists tried to free a captured slave and failed, but the struggle awakened fervent anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North. It sent Wendell Phillips on a speaking tour, transformed Ralph Waldo Emerson into an ardent abolitionist and convinced Henry David Thoreau to urge civil disobedience.

Philanthropist Amos Lawrence said, “We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.”

Anthony Burns

On the night of May 24, 1854, federal marshals seized 19-year-old Anthony Burns on Court Street and wrestled him into the courthouse on a trumped-up charge of jewelry theft.

Burns was born into slavery in Virginia. When he was 15, his arm was mangled in the sawmill where he was working. He later hired out to work on the wharves of Richmond, where he befriended a sailor from Boston who helped him escape.

He found a series of odd jobs in Boston to support himself. Burns worked in a Brattle Street clothing store when his’ owner discovered where he lived in Boston. Authorities identified him by a scar on his face that looked like a brand and an inch of bone protruding from his wrist.

The arrest horrified Wendell Phillips, the wealthy, 42-year-old son of Boston’s first mayor, and the rest of the city’s abolitionists. It wasn’t so much that the Fugitive Slave Act was being enforced — it had taken effect in 1850. Burns’ arrest came on the heels of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act two days earlier. Kansas would certainly enter the Union as a slave state, and slavery opponents feared slavery could then seep north into Boston as well.

Indignation at Burns’ arrest intensified because of the presence of several abolitionist and women’s rights groups checking into Boston hotels for their annual convention.

Wendell Phillips, by Matthew Brady

The next day Wendell Phillips went to see the terrified Anthony Burns in the courthouse. He then persuaded him to accept legal help from Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

The Boston Slave Riot

A large and furious crowd gathered at Faneuil Hall to protest Burns’ capture. Phillips gave a speech, asking 500 volunteers to surround the courthouse the next day.

Unknown to him, another abolitionist, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, had bought axes and planned to attack the courthouse to free Burns that night. At a pre-arranged signal, the crowd surged toward the courthouse.

The night riot at the courthouse. Burn’s cell is lit up in the upper left.

The Boston slave riot failed to free the prisoner, but killed a guard in the melee.

As many as a thousand troops poured into the city to restore order as the trial got under way.

After a four-day trial, the judge ordered Burns back to slavery as Phillips watched helplessly in the courtroom. He visited Burns in his cell. “Mr. Phillips,” Burns implored, “has everything been done for me that can be done? Must I go back?”

Phillips replied, “Burns, there isn’t humanity, there isn’t justice enough here to save you; you must go back.”

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., had pleaded in the courtroom for Burns’ freedom for 4-1/2 hours. For his efforts he was attacked by pro-slavery rioters.

Martial Law

On June 2, the governor placed Boston under martial law. Anthony Burns was to be shipped back to Virginia. As guards prepared to march him to the ship, nearly 50,000 people lined the streets, held back by Marines and police officers. Storefronts were draped in black, and people hung out upper windows spitting on the soldiers as the crowd shrieked, ‘Shame! Shame!’ Burns walked through the crowd with his head held high to the ship that would carry him back to Virginia.

Boston would long remember the sight of a solitary black man walking through a gauntlet of federal troops holding back crowds. President Franklin Pierce had hoped that stern enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law would quell opposition to it. But he miscalculated badly. The Boston slave riot intensified feelings against slavery in Massachusetts as the federal troops had seemed to place the commonwealth “under the feet of Virginia.”

Marshals taking Burns down State Street

Aftermath

Wendell Phillips sank into depression, from which he emerged with fresh resolve to take his anti-slavery message out of Boston to the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes. He had the blessing of his invalid wife, who would spend long weeks at home without him.

Burns wrote to Phillips from a jail in Richmond, Va., asking him to ‘dow all you can for me.’ His owner refused to sell him to abolitionists, who had raised $1,200 for the purchase.

Finally, Anthony Burns was put on the auction block and sold to David McDaniel. McDaniel did agree to sell Burns to the Boston abolitionists for $1,300. He then returned to Boston.

Wendell Phillips arranged for Anthony Burns to attend Oberlin College, where an anonymous donor gave him a scholarship. Anthony Burns would graduate, become a Baptist minister, and die of tuberculosis at the age of 28.

Phillips became the country’s foremost orator against slavery. After the Civil War, he championed the rights of women, Indians and labor. In 1870 he ran for governor of Massachusetts as a labor and temperance candidate. He lost.

Wendell Phillips died on Feb. 2, 1884. In July 1915, a monument was dedicated to commemorate him in the Boston Public Garden.

This story was updated in 2022.

11 comments 801 views